The Diplodocus

The Calm Place December 9, 2008

After all that madness — heck, all the usual madness as well — I’ve been longing for calm. (That’s kind of a theme on this blog lately, isn’t it?). One of my usual sources for calm, yoga, is incredibly difficult to find here. Sure, there are classes available — at inconvenient times, inconvenient locations, or both. Finding a weekend morning yoga class within 15 minutes of our house, by foot or rickshaw, is proving to be next to impossible. Which is why I’ve been forced to adopt a plan B, practicing yoga in the small amount of free space I can find at my gym.

Of course, complicating this is the gym’s incessant music. But I’ve managed to practice fairly consistently, and somehow acclimate myself to shivasana with a constant bass thump in the background. Surprisingly, the hardest part isn’t the music, it’s the lack of guidance. It’s easy to get stuck in a rut of favorite poses, ignoring positions that are less than pleasant. That, I’m working on — but learning to meditate amidst noise is getting easier and easier. Today I hit what I think is a high point — 5-10 minutes of actual meditation, where the background music disappeared. The visas have been rougher than normal lately, so those five to ten minutes were bliss. I actually walked out of the gym with a peaceful smile (soundtrack: Kernkraft 4000).

Like this:

LikeLoading...

Related

[…] I’ve had a post in draft about how consistently odd yoga is her in Mumbai. The fact is finding a decent yoga class here is just extremely difficult. It seems the concept of a Saturday or Sunday morning class is […]